This is pretty hilarious. Given how small the load can be to automatically contribute hashes to a pool for ___coin, I expect more of these in the future, but smarter. Runs for 5 seconds per minute on ten million devices for six months? That's no joke with some of the hardware out there.
It's this close to a victimless crime (that is, unless the victim gets their CPU/GPU fried, as has happened with these nets before). But what about apps that use spare cycles while you're plugged in, or above 75% battery, or between hours x and y, to mine dogecoins for charity? People would voluntarily submit to that!
It's the disdain for the user. Take their data, use their CPUs, whatever. Users are dumb, they won't notice, and hey, the app's free anyway.
Back in the day, the software on my "Personal Computer" was my friend. It was all wonderful things to have and to learn about.
Looking at my smartphone that's right here on my table, it's shiny, but I've long felt a distinct lack of control over the thing. And now this: Hello - any of you apps mining anything right now in there?
That would be strange, given that the only Google-produced code on my Android-running phone comes from AOSP and has had plenty of eyes (and network sniffers, and firewalls, etc) on it to weed out any such mining.
If you run Google applications (on Android or on iOS or elsewhere) you send data to Google. If you don't want to send data to Google, don't run Google applications. The same goes for Apple applications which phone home to Apple, Microsoft applications to Microsoft, etc.
Android works fine without Google applications ('gapps'). It does not need the Google Services Framework to survive. You don't need the (horribly named) 'play store'. Nor Gmail, Google Maps, Google+, etc. This is one of the big differences between Android and the other bigger players in this field - you have a choice.
That depends heavily on the user. I love my smartphone (now have a Note 3, last phone was a Note) but large-screen portable web browsing and built-in GPS/Navigation are the draw for me, not hundreds of apps. I have few installed.
Electricity and bandwidth are both resources that most people have to pay for, I would consider this theft and not a "victimless crime".
The severity of financial impact on the victim is irrelevant. If I steal tiny amounts of money ~0.01c from large amounts of people and accrued significant wealth from it, is it fine? Is it a "victimless crime" because the amount is so small?
You seem to mean "negligible", which is a different meaning than "irrelevant"; the point that was being made is that even if it were a "negligible" amount, the crime is not "victimless", hence the amount of the theft is "irrelevant": the point you seem to be making is that it might be a non-"negligible" amount, which is probably true, but at this point in the thread unrelated, and in fact according to the post you are responding to, "irrelevant" ;P.
I agree, its theft. If I borrow your bicycle all the time without you knowing it may be innocent enough, but it still causes wear and tear on the bicycle. I am thieving bicycle time from you that you paid for. If I had simply asked for it, you couldn't blame me, but alas I took it without your consent.
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Do either of these apps explicitly state that they will access/use device in this way?
Someone cuts down trees from land they don't own to haul them away for lumber? That's clear theft to me.
Removing furniture that you don't own from a cohabited dwelling and storing it without telling the owner the location? That's clear theft to me.
Someone finds lost goods that they then keep for themselves without attempting to return them to the rightful owner? I can see that being something other than theft.
Seriously? An app that does what it says isn't stealing from you. An app that runs up your electricity bill and damages your phone without disclosing its behavior is clearly a different matter.
We're not talking about damaging the phone now. As for electricity, lousy developers steal it as well. What's the difference if the stealthy app does what it says and is reasonable about mining? The cost for user is negligible.
Edit: Just a note, I'm not saying this is OK for apps to do, but to call it a theft is ridiculous.
> As for electricity, lousy developers steal it as well. What's the difference if the stealthy app does what it says and is reasonable about mining?
I can think of at least two differences. First, the developer profits from one but not the other. Second, the developer intended one but not the other.
We evaluate the morality of accidental waste differently from that of deliberate taking for personal gain.
> We evaluate the morality of accidental waste differently from that of deliberate taking for personal gain.
On the other hand, if you look at this from another perspective, inefficient software wasting power means no one gains. If the same power was being used for mining, then someone gains. If I were forced to choose between these two alternatives, I would definitely pick the latter.
If I make a mistake at doing my taxes and accidentally pay $1,000 less than I should is that the same as knowingly gaming the system so that I have to pay $1,000 less?
Here's a story from 2004 about a school IT tech who installed SETI@home on the school machines. The increased electricity bill caused some consternation and he lost his job.
I did that on some university servers around 1999. We had a few Alphas dedicated to batch processing, and I set up S@H to run on them.
One catch was that the duration of batch jobs was limited to 12 hours, so I couldn't just fire and forget. I ended up scripting it so that when the job ended, it automatically resubmitted itself to the batch queue.
It took about a day before I got a surprisingly friendly e-mail from the sysadmin asking me to please stop.
I'm inclined to believe that things like this could just be an alternative to ads. Ads take up CPU, battery life and bandwidth too (although a relatively small amount compared to coin mining). Alternative income source, I guess.
Taking that further, I would much rather be used as a fractional miner than provide unhindered, across the board access to personal transportable data and per device usage from the device.
Providing a user with means to throttle or govern the mining seems appropriate even if not explicit. If I am trying to use my device put the virtual mining crew on break and dont check back for at least 20 minutes.
Secondly, exclusive mining rights. Only one app per device, but each developer can ask for a share of the haul. Having more mining apps competing for time will work in no ones favor. As the device owner I should inherently be entitled to a significant share.
An auditible mining client would be valuable. I could certainly see this as something that could eventually fit neatly somewhere between an optional and encouraged part of an AOSP deployment.
It will frequently be the case that it would be cheaper for the user to simply buy whatever credits are being mined with their resources (which means that many of them won't knowingly run miners).
Today, perhaps and most likely in all but a few cases. That doesn't preclude a shift or evolution of platforms to more efficiently provide that capability as a built in.
It's this close to a victimless crime (that is, unless the victim gets their CPU/GPU fried, as has happened with these nets before). But what about apps that use spare cycles while you're plugged in, or above 75% battery, or between hours x and y, to mine dogecoins for charity? People would voluntarily submit to that!